SWORDDUELING.COM

The other day a fellow swordsman remarked that “I eat science,” as I’ve been eating a diet that is full of powders and pills while I’ve been rabidly working for the last 9 months. Although it is a very “unnatural” way to eat I feel like the results have been pretty good so far. I weigh about 160-165 and have increased the weight I do on weight machines by 40-80% or so, to the point where I’ve maxed out most of the machines at the gym and am benching around 260 and leg pressing 650 (300 and 700 are my 12 month goals). That being said, depending on the machine the supposed weight you are calculated as lifting can vary by hundreds of pounds, which is frustrating in terms of tracking progress.

If you are going to bother to spend your time at the gym, you are more or less investing effort in your body. Getting good results is just being efficient with your time. Here is what I do.
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Perfect soundtrack for a knife-vs-knife fight.

Formally trained guy in the white shirt, self-trained in the black. Pretty even match. It just goes to show that it’s not the martial art that counts, it’s the fighter performing it. Even if you practice the most bad-ass ancient tradition that was ever forged in the blood of enemies on the field of battle, in a lot of ways you’re on your own. An artist must develop his own voice.

(EDIT: Don’t get it twisted, though — I expect Mr. white to outstrip his opponent eventually. Formal training is a huge advantage if you can A) get your head right and B) find a teacher who’s the real deal. Neither one is easy. How does a beginner recognize a good teacher? When progress is slow, you have to take it on faith that you’re improving — how do you do that and keep from being a mindless follower? I don’t blame Mr. black for going it alone.

The fight between different philosophies here is so interesting that I kind of hope I’m wrong, and these two stay evenly matched, progressing at the same rate forever. I want to see Quenton get even more grounded in classical technique, and Vin get even more idiosyncratic.)

Mark Twain once almost had to fight a duel with a man who would have probably killed him dead. Fortunately he had a tutor named Gilles and when Twain’s opponent came by Gilles promptly shot the head off a small bird and told the man that Twain had done it and he was next. Everybody made up and walked away, but Twain later opined on dueling:

“I have never had anything do with duels since, I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet spot and kill him, Still, I have always taken a great interest in other people’s duels, One always feels an abiding interest in any heroic thing which has entered into his own experience.”

A London journal conducted a study of Italian duels in the ten years between 1879 and 1889 and found records and statistics for only a paltry 2,759, though it admitted that many others weren’t on the records.

Originators of swordplay, Italians clung to their rapiers; ninety-three percent of the time they fought with blades. Nearly four thousand wounds resulted, 1,066 listed as serious and fifty as fatal. Of the causes of combat, thirty percent were political, nineteen percent cards and other games, ten percent religious discussions, and only eight percent insults. Five times as many happened in summer as in winter, either because of the inflammatory nature of warm sunshine or because nobody wanted to go outdoors and fight in the cold rains of January. Almost none were fought during Lent; perhaps dueling was a popular indulgence to renounce for the season. Of a hundred principals singled out for inspection, thirty were military and twenty-nine were journalists, along with twelve lawyers, four students, three professors, three engineers, and three members of parliament.

Most damning of all in some eyes, only two percent of the combatants died, making the Italian duel not much more dangerous than football. Since facing possible death was central to the whole mystique why bother to fight at all with odds like that?

- From Gentlemen’s Blood by Barbara Holland

From Gentlemen’s Blood by Barbara Holland

AGAINST

In France, a splendid duel was fought in 1400 between a suspected murderer and his accuser, a dog. The Chevalier Maquer killed Aubrey de Montdidier in the Forest of Bondy, near Paris, and buried the body. The only witness was Montdidier’s greyhound.
The dog went back to town to a friend of his master’s and led the friend to the spot, where he whined and scratched the ground. The body was recovered and reburied, and the greyhound moved in with the friend. Shortly thereafter, it met up with Maquer and attacked him viciously; three men had to pull it off him. The dog was an otherwise gentle and amiable sort, but it kept on flying at Maquer whenever it saw him.

This was reported to the king, who decided it was definitely an accusation and arranged for the single-combat trial. The fight took place on the He de France in Paris, Maquer with a lance, the greyhound with its natural weapons. The dog sprang on the man with amazing ferocity and clamped its teeth around his throat and couldn’t be shaken off. Maquer screamed that he’d confess if they’d pull off the dog.

This, in contemporary eyes, proved the justice of combat trials pretty conclusively, and Maquer was hanged and strangled on the gibbet at Montfaucon.

VIA

[In the face of laws prohibiting dueling...s]ome few, even in the face of the strict new laws, managed to fight anyway. In India in 1894, two British colonial officers, Captain Phillips and Lieutenant Shepherd, suffered a falling-out and contrived an exotic local variation on the duel. They locked a deadly venomous snake, probably a cobra, into a dark room, waited an hour, and then entered the room from opposite doorways, groping their way blindly around the furniture. After ten minutes, Lieutenant Shepherd screamed. Phillips, they say, rushed out of the room with his hair turned instantly white; Shepherd died gruesomely a few hours later.

“There is something in Zen called ‘beating the grass to scare the snakes.’ To startle or surprise people a little is a device, like hitting at snakes in the grass to scare them.

To do something unexpected as a ploy to startle an opponent is also an appearance concealing an ulterior intention, an art of war.

When an opponent is startled and the feeling of opposition is distracted, the opponent will experience a gap in reaction time.

Even simple, ordinary gestures like raising your hand are used to distract an opponent’s attention.”

– from The Killing Sword, by Yagyu Munenori

Also, a riddle: